Dir: Stephen Soderbergh | Wri: Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, Gustaf Skarsgard | 93′ 2025
An elite team of British intelligence professionals bluff and double-cross one another in this retro-styled spy thriller with a plot far more complex than the theme at its core: that love is stronger than allegiance to king and country.
The lovers in this case are a married colleagues Kathryn St Jean (Blanchett) and George Woodhouse (Fassbender). But not even they can share the highly classified information passing before them at an MI5 style outfit. Iinstead they, and their highly trained team, can use the phrase ‘Black Bag’ as a cover when it suits them, to do something private or not strictly kosher.
Suspecting one of their fellow associates may be a mole, the couple stage a dinner party at their opulent London mansion. The guests could all have a motive for skulduggery when a security lapse occurs, but they all realise their hosts are not just expecting an evening of convivial conversation: they are Colonel James Stokes (Page); Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Harris), the in-house psycho-analyst and Stokes’ lover; skirt-chaser Freddie Smalls (Burke) who’s been missed for promotion; and his girlfriend, cyber expert Clarissa (Abela).
Rather like TVs Black Doves, but not nearly as violent, this niftily scripted thriller flies along at the speed of light (it’s all over in 93 minutes), so you’d be forgiven for not following the plotline: about a missing device called ‘Severus’ capable of destroying a nuclear facility, and a security leak that sees the couple’s allegiance finally put to the test.
In his third collaboration with Michael Fassbender, Soderbergh acts as his own DoP. Rather like watching those J J Abrams’ films or The Graduate’s pool scenes there’s plenty of lens flare and a needling sense of suspense builds while you blink at the screen and take in the witty repartee. You can tell Blanchett and Fassbender are fully in control and enjoying themselves rather more than the rest of the cast. Great fun while it lasts there’s a feeling this playful spy escapade won’t be remembered for long. @MeredithTaylor
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